


Collected Mini-Works

by Clocketpatch



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Drabble Collection, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-02
Updated: 2007-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-02 07:42:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/pseuds/Clocketpatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabbles and mini ficlets (nothing over 200 words) as they pop into my head, onto the keyboard, and eventually sail over here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collected Mini-Works

 

#### Chapter 1: JellyBaby ~Doctor, Susan

 **Author's Notes:** The Doctor and Susan

* * *

He remembered bouncing her on his knee. The little hybrid who the universe would never accept; if they couldn’t take him then what chance did she have?  
  
So they ran away, away, away, to planets far and oceans wide. They settled in a junk yard. That seemed the only place for floating scraps like them.  
  
He remembered the first time she brought home the strange sweets.  
  
He hated them.  
  
Now he loves them. A change of taste buds can do that to a man. Yet, they make him remember, and he wonders how something so sweet can taste so sad.

[Back to index](http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?action=printable&textsize=0&sid=10385&chapter=all#top)

* * *

#### Chapter 2: Once and forever ~The Master

 **Author's Notes:** The Master

* * *

He never cheated in school. His marks always flew to the top of the list. When teachers debated which of their students would go furthest his name inevitably came up.  
  
And he was kind, and good, and generous. His only crime was occasionally slipping answers to his best friend. That friend. The one who wore trouble like a robe and tromped through the halls in it. He failed once, and only squeaked by the second time with one percent to spare, and he didn’t use honest means to gain it.  
  
One was good.  
  
It was strange how things turned out.

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* * *

#### Chapter 3: Girl in a Bottle ~Seven, Ace

 **Author's Notes:** Seven and Ace

* * *

The comprachicos used to take young children and put them in glass tubes so their growing bodies would twist into hideous shapes. Such ends weren’t always the goal. Manipulation and beauty often went hand and hand. He remembered one culture that bound the feet of their young girls, making them beautiful cripples for life. He would manipulate her to be strong not crippled. He would trim away her insecurities leaving her a beautiful tree. After all, he reasoned, trees needed to be trimmed to get rid of dead wood and prevent disease. He only prayed his ministrations didn’t bonsai her.

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* * *

#### Chapter 4: Ginger ~Five, Turlough, Tegan

 **Author's Notes:** Turlough, Five, and Tegan

* * *

Turlough felt _something_ stabbing the back of his head. He turned to find it was the Doctor's eyes.  
  
"What are you staring at?" he asked, his suspicious nature piqued.  
  
"Ah, er, nothing really," the Doctor paused his stumbles for a moment before re-composing himself, "There was something interesting in the ah…" composure failed, the Doctor left the room before further damage could be incurred.  
  
Turlough acted grumpy for the remainder of the day.  
  
@  
  
"Your laughter is most inappropriate."  
  
Tegan doubled over again. The Doctor, his head a mass of swamp-green patches, was looking more and more distressed with each passing moment.  
  
"I had no way of knowing that the praxis component of the pigment would react badly with my own unique…"  
  
Turlough entered the room in time to hear the end of the Doctor's babbling explanation. A survey of the damage combined with the stares the Doctor had been giving him lately brought his cunning mind to the logical conclusion. He greeted it with a smirk, pivoted on his heel, and made his exit.

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* * *

#### Chapter 5: On a dark and stormy... ~Seven, Master

 **Author's Notes:** the Master and Seven. Argh, this wouldn't let me sleep... Set immediately before the events that occur in the prologue of the TV movie. This is just one scene from a larger plot bunny I've been planning that would essentially be a re-write of that movie. But this is probably all that will come of it since that bunny is a bit confused and keeps running into walls. That and Time is Out of Joint by whispersecho totally beats into submission any re-write I could ever come up with.

* * *

On a dark and stormy night another cliché reached its climax.  
  
In an alley, situated between a boarded-up factory and an abandoned brownstone, where the ground and brick walls were coated in a scum of garbage and cat piss, two old men met.  
  
They stood at a length from each other. Not speaking. Though their eyes held a conversation that sailed beyond the limitations of mere _words_.  
  
Eyes that were hard and driving. Like the rain.  
  
Both dressed darkly, but apart from that and being elderly they could have been ying and yang: the difference in height, and fashion, and the wild mane to contrast a neatly trimmed goatee.  
  
And after a time, their talkless talk done, they left the alley by their own ends to complete their own means. The rain continued to pour, erasing their footprints from the slug.

[Back to index](http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?action=printable&textsize=0&sid=10385&chapter=all#top)

* * *

#### Chapter 6: Winter Friendship ~Seven, Jamie

 **Author's Notes:** Seven, Jamie  
  
Not written as slash, but to the vivid imagination all things are possible

* * *

Winter, and the hills were grey. An old man in tawdry trousers and a knit shirt leaned arthritically on a shovel. Age and oppression had tamed his once wild eyes. Another man approached. Also old, older than he looked with his close black hair and queer dress, older than the grey hills.  
  
"How are you?" the stranger asked the man with the shovel, making the 'r' long and comfortable.  
  
This meeting had been long delayed by accent and by memory. The stranger glared at the old man's plain and dirty leggings. He cursed against repression in a very foreign tongue.  
  
"I wanted to return before. I missed you."  
  
The man with the shovel blinked.  
  
"Ah'v nevah seen you before in mah life."  
  
In the stranger's eyes a candle dimmed never to be re-lit. This meeting had been long delayed by accent, and memory, and the knowledge that it could only end one way.  
  
"I know," he said. Jamie flinched when the Doctor rubbed his nose and the affection was lost. "but I wanted to say thank you anyway."

[Back to index](http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?action=printable&textsize=0&sid=10385&chapter=all#top)

* * *

#### Chapter 7: Befores and Afters, much afters ~Nine, Rose

 **Author's Notes:** Weird musings on the Doctor's mysterious past. Take it as you will. Nine and Rose I guess, but not really. Something of a companion piece/ first draft to my other story Somnambulists, though, in the end, that plot twisted down a rather different path. Both pieces are the result of entirely too much time reading origins theories on wikipedia.

* * *

He never told her that her golden hair reminded him of his mother, or that way she pushed her tongue between her teeth during a smile echoed the grins of his half-sister so long ago.  
  
In a memory that wasn’t his but was. Not a different body; a different life. Not a regeneration away; a different 'r'.  
  
He never found out who his father was, none of the three did, but some called them god’s children.  
  
When watching the planet burn at the year five billion he didn’t tell her.  
  
 _Rocks and dust_  
  
That now both his worlds were gone.

[Back to index](http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?action=printable&textsize=0&sid=10385&chapter=all#top)

* * *

#### Chapter 8: Twice Saved ~Doctor

 **Author's Notes:** I'm obviously in a drabbling mood.  
  
Three, Nine, and Rose Well, not really

* * *

On the darkest day of his childhood an old hermit showed him the secret of the universe in a daisy.  
On an auburn hill, struggling to grow between grit and snow.  
The truth of his destiny in a few delicate petals, unfurling to dare the harsh mountain breeze.  
  
 _Clouds could not stop it_  
  
On the darkest day of his adulthood he killed that daisy, swept away its hill, and the copper sky it grew under. Crushed by the on-coming storm.  
Again a flower saved him.  
Delicate petals defying his downpour, and thorns to sting the lightening.  
  
 _Every flower requires rain_

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* * *

#### Chapter 9: Between Broadcasts ~Doctor

 **Author's Notes:** No real era, just a general observation.

* * *

He spent most of his time alone.  
  
What did the Hitchiker's guide say? _space is a big place_  
  
So was time.  
  
So was the TARDIS when empty. Then the long corridors and shifting rooms seemed hollow.  
  
He clung to companionship throughout his lives, but the danger came with the plural, and with his chosen species of association. They would come for a few years, or shorter — then they would leave and he would be alone for eternities.  
  
Empty rooms. Conversations with air.  
  
The mad perform no heroics.  
  
But they never knew, since they only tuned in for the interesting bits.

[Back to index](http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?action=printable&textsize=0&sid=10385&chapter=all#top)

* * *

#### Chapter 10: Famous First Words ~Doctor, companion

 **Author's Notes:** 100 word exactly in MSword. No character, just a familar scene.

* * *

"It's bigger insi —"  
  
"I know."  
  
 _State the obvious a little harder will you_  
  
"But that's imp —"  
  
 _And then ignore it_  
  
"It also travels through time."  
  
 _Don't look at me like that.  
  
Stop playing dumb.  
  
You say the store is fifteen minutes away by car and an hour by foot and you're using advanced abstract reasoning. You compress time and space in the pages of a book. You explore both in imagination and memories.  
  
Your minds are bigger on the inside, if you'd give them a chance. _  
  
"This is so cool!"  
  
"Yes, it is a bit impressive isn't it?"

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* * *

#### Chapter 11: Details ~Doctor, companion

 **Author's Notes:** 100 exactly in word. Inspired by DW 100 prompt: vintage

* * *

 **Details**  
  
He looks at himself in the mirror.  
  
He observes and notices things most humans would miss. Like how many eyelashes he has above his right eye.  
  
And he misses things those same humans would see. Their first impressions. The colour of his eyes, the tone of his hair and its length.  
  
This is him, and it is not. The little things are what stay the same, and reassure him that he isn’t mad.  
  
Everything else is only superficial.  
  
Except it isn’t.  
  
He knows when he turns from the mirror. When he looks at her and the shade in her eyes.

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* * *

#### Chapter 12: It was just a little nightcap... ~Iris, Doctor

 **Author's Notes:** Iris Wildthyme and the Doctor.

* * *

  
“So, this regeneration lark. One moment I think I’ve just got me all figured out and then I manage to become a new me. It’s murder on the wardrobe you know.”  
  
“Shut up Iris.”  
  
“Ah, stop going off at the mouth chuck.”  
  
“If you hadn’t been driving drunk through the vortex in that wreckage that you call a bus — ”  
  
“Now don’t be calling names!”  
  
“ — and crashing into my TARDIS. Iris, so help me — ”  
  
“Well be like that then, but you’re the one who came out lucky. Fancy that bum. Look what I got stuck with. And those nice — ”  
  
  
“Iris!”  
  
  
  
“— perky —”  
  
  
  
“If you say it —”  
  
  
  
“Ears.”  


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* * *

#### Chapter 13: Manichaean paranoia ~Doctor

 **Author's Notes:** The Doctor is good. The villians are evil. Right?

* * *

There is a forest,                 somewhere.  
  
It is green and tall. The trees cast shadows. The sun casts light. It is good.  
  
There are people,                 somehow.  
  
Saws slash old wood to make room, scattering and killing small woodland beasts. Their city shines. They are only people. With needs, with families. They are not evil.  
  
There are killers,                 sometimes.  
  
With metal shells and metal dreams they raze the city, scattering and killing small histories. Is this not fair?  
  
There is a man,                   some say.  
  
Who conceals his shadow inside, and thinks himself better. Carrying his choices as, somewhere, the forest is reborn.

[Back to index](http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?action=printable&textsize=0&sid=10385&chapter=all#top)

* * *

#### Chapter 14: Earthshock ~Five

 **Author's Notes:** Fivey. Inspired by Primsong's awesome title drabbles. I've shamelessly yoinked her idea.

* * *

The Five Doctors’ awakening (they are not immortal) comes with the enlightenment of the King’s favourite Demon. His arc of infinity reaches its terminus in the Caves of Androzani, his time-flight ends and reaches for resurrection. Of the Daleks, there is no final visitation. Castrovalva, Frontios, Mawdryn… undead visions of his life snakedance before his dimming eyes, consumed by the planet of fire and his best enemy’s laugh. Memories, rising like warriors of the deep, like black orchids, like young boys and dinosaurs —  
Kinda sad. He’s had four regenerations. Four is too early for doomsday.  
  
It feels different this time.

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* * *

#### Chapter 15: Still the sky ~Donna, Wilf

 **Author's Notes:** Donna, Wilf DW100 prompt 227: balustrade

* * *

Donna sits, idly picking at frost-stiffened grass.  
  
“It’s bloody freezing tonight. Mum’s having a fit about you getting pneumonia.”  
  
“I’m made of sterner stuff than that,” says Wilf, watching between stars for a sign.  
  
“Isn’t it too cloudy to see anything?”  
  
Wilf looks at his granddaughter. She's still there, inside. Wilf knows her confinement isn’t completely the Doctor’s fault; He and Sylvia help support that guardrail with their lies.  
  
“There’s always something,” Wilf says.  
  
Donna examines a cold-withered flower.  
  
“Seems like there’s nothing.”  
  
“There’s the whole world —”  
  
Donna hugs him then. They look up together.  
  
“and the whole sky.”

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* * *

#### Chapter 16: Expecting only darkness after ~TARDIS

 **Author's Notes:** 100 exactly in MS word. DW100 prompt 232: char  
  
The Tardis, before she meets the Doctor.

* * *

 

_**Expecting only darkness after** _

  
  
  
One way; this way; his way; their way —  
  
One way; think for yourself? No. Your job is not to think. Bloody machine.  
  
Carry. Your job — your existence — is to carry.  
  
No, no, no, Gallifrey is much too posh for _slavery_. You’re more of a… servant. And well, you aren’t actually _alive_ are you?  
  
  
Burning. Landing. Seeking.  
  
  
Bloody deficient machine! It’s broken. Fix it? No, no. It’s irreparable, I think: main navigational circuit’s faulty. It exploded! And, besides, there are far more efficient models these days.  
  
Toss it.  
  
  
~  
  
  
I hum into the darkness; alone, burnt, abandoned —  
  
Free.  
  
  
  
~Later~  
  
We escape.

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* * *

#### Chapter 17: Of a Kind (not very kind) ~ Nyssa

 **Author's Notes:** dedicated to Ann_blue. Thanks for the prompt.

* * *

** Of a Kind (not very kind) **

  
Nyssa does not believe in coincidence. The universe is a vast place, and not infinite as it pretends; there will always be people with similarities in experience, and sometimes those people will meet.

  
She is reassured by logic.

  
But also, she is an empath, and knows the vagaries of the mind.

  
She sees the blonde girl, and knows the similarity, the difference. Nyssa lost her home at a young age; This Jenny lost her home before she was born, or rather, grown.

  
Nyssa sees the blonde hair and the devil-may-care smile. She hears the tick of military stratagem, and senses the shoddy biochemical arrangements of a disposable clone soldier.

  
Nyssa does not believe in fate or serendipity or cosmic jokes (though, in the back of her mind, she occasionally wonders if her entire life has been one of the latter). She looks at the girl and wonders how two people can be so like and unlike at the same time.

  
It all comes back to time.

  
She will not tell the Doctor about this meeting because, say what he might pro or nay, Nyssa knows that he does not believe either, and some illusions must be preserved.

  
_fini_

[Back to index](http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?action=printable&textsize=0&sid=10385&chapter=all#top)

* * *

#### Chapter 18: The Moving Finger Writes ~ John Smith

 **Author's Notes:** DW100 prompt #238: expunge

* * *

John Smith slowly moved the rubber across the page trying for a clean erase rather than a smear. His teacher’s instinct rebelled at the untidiness that would bring. He’d discipline his students if they kept their notebooks as messy as his, but then, this was not for academics.  
  
Messy in mind, messy in habit, messy in life, John berated himself, setting the book and its smudged fantasies aside.  
  
He neatened his robes in front of the mirror before exiting his room. He walked with an economic stride, passing two maids polishing the floor.  
  
In his mind, the rubber moved.

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* * *

#### Chapter 19: Pruning ~ Eight, Charley

If he could still laugh the irony would make him chuckle; he’d never realised he was a gardener.  
  
When pollarding a tree you cut off its crown, and there was every chance you might kill it. You took a sapling, a girl of eighteen, and you mutilated her. Snip, snip went the clever shears. Snip, snip. And young girls fell.  
  
But then—  
  
possibilities and branches unfold from the survivors. A pollard tree might live longer than her uncut siblings.  
  
The years comes with a price.  
  
She will inevitably rot inside. Become hollow.  
  
Oh Charley, did I save you for this?

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* * *

#### Chapter 20: In the Closet ~ Jamie

 **Author's Notes:** Written about three years ago for writercon100 on lj and then forgotten until the pingback bot reminded me of it.

* * *

sorry to disappoint with the title, but it's not smutty:  
  
  
On, off.  
  
Off, on.  
  
He’s being sneaky in the boot cupboard because he doesn’t want the Doctor or, worse, Zoe to know what he’s up to.  
  
Off, on.  
  
On, off.  
  
They’d both try to explain how electricity works, the speed of light, the TARDIS power system — and they’d laugh while doing it too. Well, Zoe would; the Doctor would just smile a bit, wring his hands:  
  
“Oh, dear! Jamie, I thought I’d explained to you about the lights.”  
  
“Aye, Doctor, you did.”  
  
…  
  
They were both thick as wood sometimes for all their brains.  
  
Off, on.  
  
On, off.  
  
Jamie grins.

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* * *

#### Chapter 21: Shoes ~ Three

 **Author's Notes:** Written for Three month on lj's who_at_50 comm

* * *

Black leather and laces  
He pretends they are precious  
They no longer fit  
  
Friends took his old clothes  
Good intentions took his friends  
He did not save them  
  
This is what remains:  
Stranger friends, a broken box —  
Another man's shoes  
  
These consequences  
Hurt less than understanding  
He would do it again  


 

* * *

#### Chapter 22: New Recipes ~ Eleven, Clara

He is good at hiding, lying, cheating, pretending, running —  
  
Destroying.  
  
After the Ponds left, he wanted to burn New York to the ground. Sometimes, he scares himself.  
  
He hides from his thoughts in Victorian London. Then Clara happens. He wears a bow tie again. He makes glib remarks. He pretends to her that he has no demons.  
  
You'd think apple grass would smell like apple pie when it catches fire, but it doesn't. Funny that. He links hands with Clara as they run through the swirling green smoke. She coughs.  
  
"You look like you're enjoying this."  
  
He is. Funny that.

 

* * *

* * *

**Chapter 23 Turquoise Thoughts ~ TARDIS, Eleven, Clara**

Author's Notes: Written for Three month on lj's who_at_50 comm

-  
  
The TARDIS is blue. She is not metaphorically blue. She is the colour located between green and violet on the visible spectrum. She could be a different colour, but blue is familiar. She is/ was/ will be blue.  
  
The humans have such funny associations with colour. Sometimes, they think she is sad because she is physically blue. The TARDIS is not metaphorically blue.  
  
On that symbolic spectrum, she is green. Clara makes her green.  
  
She is her thief's constant companion and the guardian of his timelines. She should be the one to save him.  
  
She cannot.  
  
Green and blue mix.

 

 

* * *

* * *

**Chapter 24 g ~ Seven, Ace  
**

Author's Notes: Written for poetry drabble meme stolen from lost_spook. The rules were to visit a website which gave you random poems, take the fifth line from whatever poem you got, and write a drabble. For this one I got warped this perhapsy by e.e. cummings and the fifth line was... g.

-

  
Seven ducklings cross the road in a disastrously perpendicular arrangement, tripping over themselves until there is a tumbled pile of yellow fluff outrageously quaking in the middle of the motorway. Their mother mounts a hissing defense. Hopeless. Until a stranger in question marks risks traffic to rescue them.  
  
The drivers offer creative curses.  
  
"Impatient toerags," says the stranger's apprentice.  
  
"People are busy with their lives. Too busy to care about the fate of little birds wandering into danger but – " the stranger sets down the last duckling, safe on the grassy verge, and taps his apprentice's nose. "They still stopped."


End file.
